


Gutter

by corcou



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-14
Updated: 2013-06-14
Packaged: 2017-12-14 23:29:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/842674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corcou/pseuds/corcou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Knowledge ought to be terrifying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gutter

"You," Hannibal says, "are not attached. Not in the particular, to either of these figures."

"He took my shattered bones and fit them together. And she gave me what I needed to fill the cracks and hang on the skeleton my flesh. I don't know if I'm speaking of my body or my mind or my soul, anymore. Let's say, for the sake of argument, all of them. But. Do you see, Hannibal? I am. I am more than I was. They—killed their own jobs, in my psyche."

"Impolite to offer you a refinement of either work." Hannibal sips his wine, gaze cool and steady over the rim. What they have already done together, Will supposes, casts a penumbra sufficient to cover _Fugitive and suspect in his escape_. "But I have not heard, in this account, the process of discovery."

"Existence precedes," Will says.

Hannibal nods. "You'd be uncomfortable if you believed otherwise." 

He reaches towards what Will thinks is his knee, before the wrist bends and the fingers close around the glass stem instead. Will can knock it over. The power condemns him: in a moment there is a gaudy nova of Barolo on Hannibal's jacket. Hannibal has not the grace to look surprised or even to hide his lips' small downturn of disappointment. Does even he experience creeping determinism? Will is following a will-o'-the-wisp, he thinks, that has inadequately mapped its own marsh and yet leads cheerfully on into the dark, certain his ruin lurks out there to be found and that it is responsible for his presence there once he sinks. Even if he must drown his erstwhile guide before he truly knows he's lost.

Even if Hannibal, pressing a cold palm against his cheek, dispels the night and water; the bubbling ferment beneath his toes, the ground transmuting as if in earthquake; and the solitary light, and the knowledge he is no safer with it extinguished.

"I feel—frustrated. You aren't startled by me, but you won't explain why not. Aren't doctors supposed to write articles when they dissect people?"

"People."

"You can't be resorting to that insult."

"No," says Hannibal. "I say only that a future observer can extract equally as much with paintings, sculptures, films. Renditions, not people." 

"You've said the mind is the finest canvas."

"You do not open up a person without steeping yourself in their blood. At the very least one must split you apart to parse you. I was your friend, and I would not participate in your unmaking. —And, as such, I would advise you not play at language with me."


End file.
